Best Value Audits

There are many reasons why you may be considering a Best Value audit.

You may need reassurance that you are receiving value for money. Or you may have concerns about existing contracts – or the lack of them.

Whatever the reason, Strictly Education can help. We can audit building cleaning, catering, lettings management and premises management.

For one school recently, our cleaning audit, conducted by a BICSc accredited Field Officer, showed that they were receiving good value, although we were able to highlight a number of recommendations to improve the cleaning provision. This audit proved valuable evidence for the school’s FMSiS assessment.

For another school we had a very different situation. There was no formal cleaning contract in place and the school had been employing agency staff in the mistaken belief that this would allow them to abdicate out of employment rights. The school had overspent dramatically against its cleaning budget and the audit action plan required major change to upgrade the cleaning provision to a satisfactory level.

Amongst the actions arising from the audit we recommended that a formal cleaning contract needed to be set up. We have drawn up the tender documentation including specification and bills of quantities and will shortly be tendering the contract through the OJEU due to the size of the site. We expect to substantially reduce the school’s cleaning costs (potentially £40k saving) as well as upgrade the cleaning standards considerably.

Following contract award we’ll support with the TUPE transfer arrangements and monitor the contractor’s performance on behalf of the school. In effect the school needs to do very little and can concentrate on their core activities around educational achievement, enjoy a clean school environment and consider how they will effectively spend the funds they have saved on cleaning.

On another occasion, a catering audit highlighted concerns about which the school management had been unaware: food was not cooked or maintained at the correct temperatures, meat was unlabelled so no means of telling when it should be disposed of or if it was halal. Insufficient food was being prepared to get through the service and no batch cooking was being undertaken. Food was not nutritionally balanced and most of it was expensive frozen ready meals.

We recommended the implementation of a low cost sandwich bar, also selling pasta, salad and fruit and advertise meal deals to encourage take up. The catering team was sufficient to prepare freshly made meals and batch cook so this was a further recommendation. Forgoing frozen ready meals not only improved the nutritional balance of the meals offered but substantially reduced the cost resulting in a healthier menu at reduced cost.